The present disclosure relates to the detection of remote equipment failures in an optical network system.
As the Internet, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), and Internet Protocol television (IPTV) grow in popularity, more and more users desire to have access to these services from their premises. Likewise, businesses now require more and more bandwidth delivered to their premises with necessary quality of service. In order to meet the growing bandwidth demand, optical fibers are being laid to cover more areas, often directly linked to the customer premises. Different types of communication equipment such as xDSL, xPON, WDM, ROADM, etc. are being deployed cross optical networks. Service providers' networks are becoming more and more complex than ever before. Network manageability and serviceability are becoming key challenges for service providers to ensure service level agreement (SLA) and guarantee customer satisfaction.
One of the most common failures in optical networks is optical loss of signal (LOS). LOS can be caused by many reasons such as fiber cut, remote power and/or equipment failures. In order to determine the failure points and causes for the failures, service providers often dispatch service technicians with necessary diagnostic tools, equipment, and spare parts to the field or remote sites, which is known as “truck roll”. Tuck-roll accounts for significant portion of operational expenses for service providers.
Conventional optical transceivers can assert LOS or de-assert SD (signal detect) indication signal when the received optical power is less than a predetermined level. However, it does not provide enough information for further determining the root causes of the LOS.
Capabilities of remote detection of power failure can help service providers to avoid unnecessary truck-rolls. “Dying gasp” refers to a function of reporting, through the optical network, a power supply problem experienced by an optical device at a remote site. “Dying gasp” can be conducted, for example, via Ethernet operation administration and management (OAM) in an optical network. Conventional “Dying gasp”, such as the one defined in IEEE specification, requires interoperability between equipment at the failure location and the detecting point of the optical connection. In practice, interoperability often requires additional demarcation equipment to be deployed at the remote site, which results in additional equipment and labor costs.
There is therefore a need for a dying gasp function that is simple and cost effective.